


An awful Tempest mashed the air--

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Biblical References, Chess, Childhood Memories, F/M, Gen, Romance, Storms, wood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-23 23:30:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8347018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: It seemed the rain would never end.





	

“An ark no longer seems such a preposterous idea,” Jed remarked, letting the muslin curtain fall back and mask the view; it was the same heavy, cold rain they’d had for days and the world outside Mansion House was all grey and brown, muddled cloud and dank air, the dusty streets a memory replaced by rivers and runnels of wet earth, fluid and uneven underfoot.

“Mmm,” Mary hummed, occupied with something he hadn’t paid much mind to, some of the endless work that she seemed to thrive on.

“An ark’s an undertaking though, especially with his passenger list,” he went on, entertaining himself with the image of the great ship, the way the elephants would have been patient but not the giraffes, badgers and otters and foxes all jockeying for place. Would mosquitos have returned with reports of the accommodations? 

“Yes, well, that’s to be expected,” Mary said absently. Jed was bored, exceedingly so, the hospital had been dull with not one unusual case, one miraculous recovery, the post was delayed by the infernal, eternal storm and he’d read all the books he had with him and now he sought Mary’s attention and could not secure it. Henry had not played one decent game of chess since Miss Green had asked for private religious instruction and Matron had laughed at his offer of a chess match, saying “I’d rather sleep without any interruption, boyo, and God knows ye can’t find a gambit worth me openin’ me eyes for. Go pester someone else—McBurney’s been givin’ ye the cow-eyes so ye’d teach him that Frenchie technique ye used on young Peters or ye might lift a finger to help the Head Nurse with her clinic for the doxies.”

He chosen what Matron must have suspected and tried to beard Mary in her den, but here she was barely raising her eyes to glance at him and still the rain fell. They’d had forty days of this? At least Noah had talked with God about it before-hand and had been given a guarantee of an end and some new beginning.

“I had a sailboat once, all tamarack and cedar, but it couldn’t have held a menagerie,” he tried and something must have caught her, the idea of the boat with its sails billowing or his tone of voice, soft and reminiscent, undemanding. He would try to give her something and see if that interested her.

“Did you like to sail very much?” she asked, closing a book or setting down her mending with the needle safely nestled in a fold; he didn’t bother about that, just that she had turned towards him and her eyes were curious as her voice.

“For a time. I preferred collecting things, you know, creatures and shells, stones, I was convinced every other one was an Indian arrowhead, but I liked to be away…from the plantation and all the rules, just to be alone with the water and the sky. The wind always made things feel very exciting,” he said.

“Wasn’t it dangerous? To be all alone?” she said. 

Young women were hardly ever alone, chaperoned, made to travel in packs, flock like geese and twice as silly, most of them. Yet when she said it, he heard how she would have liked it, being solitary and self-reliant, the appeal of the risk, the wideness of the world.

“Not very. And sometimes my brother came or a houseboy, so it wasn’t just me. But I liked that it was, could be dangerous, as you say. I’ve always wanted to sail too close to the edge. You’ve seen the old maps, the ones that say 'here be dragons?' I’d be the first one to sail into the dragon’s maw,” he said with a laugh.

“So you are Jonah then, and not Noah? Or Odysseus perhaps… No, he was trying to get home. Aeneas, fleeing?” she teased. 

He thought he’d never met a woman so well-read and so easy with it. The Frenchwomen in the Parisian salons were as witty but always arch or determined to catch him out, most delicately, to show they could but Mary only wanted to talk, to play a little if the work was not too burdensome or pressing. She did not compete but made it clear she’d her own ideas and knowledge, her own cleverness that needed exercise. He was about to make some reply about Dido or the sirens, when thunder rumbled overhead, seeming to shake them both, like being awakened.

“Oh, the boys won’t like that-- all that noise like cannon and the whole place already mildewed, to the rooftops I think. I declare the weevils will start serving the biscuit themselves tomorrow night,” Mary said, suddenly as peevish as he’d ever heard.

“They’ll have to make do, we all do. It’s a small enough trial, this storm, and it’s meant less fighting, less dying” he said, surprised to find himself the one offering calmly reasonable advice.

“I suppose,” she agreed grudgingly. “It’s meant dullness and squabbles and everything… festering. I like a storm, but not like this, I like the snow, heavy and white and silent, being tucked up and snug, together,” she added, seeing something he could not. He couldn’t tell if it was a memory, like his tamarack sailboat, or a future, a dream, he couldn’t tell who was _together_ and he almost couldn’t bear to wonder, knew he couldn’t ask.

“With you, Jedediah, with you,” she said, soft but not a murmur, nothing disguised. 

He hadn’t asked but she’d known he wanted to and she’d granted him the wish, as she did in so many ways. Noah must not have loved his wife very much, he thought, for to be alone together in the ship’s cabin with that steady rain should have been a prize and not a punishment as it was made out, if he’d loved her. If he found himself alone with Mary, truly alone and allowed, he would not mind if the ship never came to harbor, if the seas rose to the heavens so they could walk from the cedar deck right onto the gleaming moon.

“ _Gemütlichkeit_ , that’s what you mean,” he said trying to steer them to safety for they were not truly alone and it was not allowed. He knew the word was not quite correct, for it was not a word for lovers, for a devoted husband with a cherished wife, but it was acceptable and Mary would know he was not playing carelessly for once. She nodded and there didn’t seem to be any pain in her eyes at hearing another man speak to her, even a little, in her dead husband’s German.

“Yes, that’s near enough. Perhaps if you help me look for a few missing pawns, we might play a little chess before supper needs attending to or you need to make rounds on Corporal Peters,” she suggested. There was nothing to say but yes.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a composite story-- prompted by ultrahotpink with "storm" and as a gift of sorts for tvsn for her wedding anniversary (hence all the references to wood and German coziness). And I wrote it during a flood watch.
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson, as usual.


End file.
